Hanway Films will represent worldwide sales at next month’s EFM on Winter Of The Crow, a Cold War thriller starring Oscar-nominated actress Lesley Manville. The film is currently shooting in Warsaw.
Based on a short story by Nobel Prize and International Booker-winning Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, the feature is set in what is described as “the surreal and cinematic world of 1981 Warsaw.” The full synopsis reads: Warsaw, Poland – December 13th, 1981 – martial law is imposed and overnight shuts down the country just as British psychiatry professor Dr. Joan Andrews (Manville) arrives in Warsaw as a guest lecturer at the University. Taxis have been replaced by tanks; citizens are treated like criminals. But as chaos engulfs the city, armed with her camera she witnesses a brutal murder by the secret police.
In mortal danger and trapped as Poland is closed down, Joan becomes a hunted fugitive running for her life. Using...
Based on a short story by Nobel Prize and International Booker-winning Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, the feature is set in what is described as “the surreal and cinematic world of 1981 Warsaw.” The full synopsis reads: Warsaw, Poland – December 13th, 1981 – martial law is imposed and overnight shuts down the country just as British psychiatry professor Dr. Joan Andrews (Manville) arrives in Warsaw as a guest lecturer at the University. Taxis have been replaced by tanks; citizens are treated like criminals. But as chaos engulfs the city, armed with her camera she witnesses a brutal murder by the secret police.
In mortal danger and trapped as Poland is closed down, Joan becomes a hunted fugitive running for her life. Using...
- 1/30/2024
- by Zac Ntim
- Deadline Film + TV
Lesley Manville, most recently seen as Princess Margaret in the final seasons of “The Crown,” is to lead “Winter of the Crow,” now shooting in Warsaw, Poland.
Ahead of the European Film Market in Berlin, HanWay is launching worldwide sales on the feature, based on the short story by Olga Tokarczuk, a Nobel Literature Prize and International Booker Prize winner and one of the most critically acclaimed and successful authors of her generation in Poland.
Alongside Manville, soon to be seen in “Back to Black,” the sporting cast includes Tom Burke, Zofia Wichłacz (“World on Fire” and a European Shooting Star winner at the Berlin Film Festival in 2017) and Andrzej Konopka.
From award-winning director and storyboard artist Kasia Adamik (winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2017 for “Spoor”), “Winter of the Crow” is a Cold War thriller set in the surreal and cinematic world of 1981 Warsaw.
Ahead of the European Film Market in Berlin, HanWay is launching worldwide sales on the feature, based on the short story by Olga Tokarczuk, a Nobel Literature Prize and International Booker Prize winner and one of the most critically acclaimed and successful authors of her generation in Poland.
Alongside Manville, soon to be seen in “Back to Black,” the sporting cast includes Tom Burke, Zofia Wichłacz (“World on Fire” and a European Shooting Star winner at the Berlin Film Festival in 2017) and Andrzej Konopka.
From award-winning director and storyboard artist Kasia Adamik (winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2017 for “Spoor”), “Winter of the Crow” is a Cold War thriller set in the surreal and cinematic world of 1981 Warsaw.
- 1/30/2024
- by Alex Ritman
- Variety Film + TV
The medium is the message in Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border, a piece of political cinema so freshly ripped from the headlines that you can still feel the jagged edges. Holland shot the film, which chronicles the wide ripple effects of a 2021 surge of asylum seekers along the Polish-Belarusian border, in just 23 days in March of this year and had it ready for fall festivals mere months later. In the end, her sense of propulsive, incandescent outrage is both the project’s reason for existence and its strongest attribute.
Holland, directing in collaboration with Kamila Tarabura and Katarzyna Warzecha, resists the impulse for urgency to trump all aesthetic considerations. Green Border moves beyond documentary-style realism as a shorthand for authenticity, and it’s at its most gut-wrenching when Tomek Naumiuk’s agile camerawork captures bodies in frequent, frightening motion, as well as the illusory sense of security that those bodies feel in moments of rest.
Holland, directing in collaboration with Kamila Tarabura and Katarzyna Warzecha, resists the impulse for urgency to trump all aesthetic considerations. Green Border moves beyond documentary-style realism as a shorthand for authenticity, and it’s at its most gut-wrenching when Tomek Naumiuk’s agile camerawork captures bodies in frequent, frightening motion, as well as the illusory sense of security that those bodies feel in moments of rest.
- 10/9/2023
- by Marshall Shaffer
- Slant Magazine
Before the New York Film Festival premiere of her latest opus, Green Border, legendary director Agnieszka Holland wished everyone a good screening: “I would tell you to enjoy the film, but that would not be appropriate.”
It was an apt warning for the harrowing, exquisite film that unfolded. Green Border focuses on the treatment of migrants trying to cross from Belarus to Poland so they can find asylum in the European Union. As a result, Holland is now on the shit list of nearly every high-ranking Polish politician, from the president to the Minister of Science and Higher Education. What a shame they’re so blinded by their station that they can’t even appreciate magnificent works of art. Green Border is a riveting, finely crafted, deeply human accounting of the atrocities we make permissible in the name of nationalism.
The film is told in several parts that focus on...
It was an apt warning for the harrowing, exquisite film that unfolded. Green Border focuses on the treatment of migrants trying to cross from Belarus to Poland so they can find asylum in the European Union. As a result, Holland is now on the shit list of nearly every high-ranking Polish politician, from the president to the Minister of Science and Higher Education. What a shame they’re so blinded by their station that they can’t even appreciate magnificent works of art. Green Border is a riveting, finely crafted, deeply human accounting of the atrocities we make permissible in the name of nationalism.
The film is told in several parts that focus on...
- 10/9/2023
- by Lena Wilson
- The Film Stage
The Polish film Green Border had already courted plenty of international controversy by the time the drama premiered at the New York Film Festival this week. After its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in August, where it won the Special Jury Prize, the film — which depicts the horrific conditions faced by migrants attempting to cross from Belarus into Poland — has broken box office records in its home country despite a government-approved warning video before the movie downplaying its critique of the Polish government’s handling of the border crisis.
“I’ve become the biggest threat to Polish national security,” said director Agnieszka Holland during a Q&a following the film’s Thursday night screening in which the filmmaker was joined by cinematographer Tomasz Naumiuk and actresses Behi Djanati-Atai and Joely Mbundu. Just before the Venice premiere, both the Polish justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro and president Andrzej Duda compared...
“I’ve become the biggest threat to Polish national security,” said director Agnieszka Holland during a Q&a following the film’s Thursday night screening in which the filmmaker was joined by cinematographer Tomasz Naumiuk and actresses Behi Djanati-Atai and Joely Mbundu. Just before the Venice premiere, both the Polish justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro and president Andrzej Duda compared...
- 10/6/2023
- by Tyler Coates
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
While you’re still in the vice-like grip of its multilevel narrative it may not feel like it, but a film like Agnieszka Holland’s bruisingly powerful new refugee drama ultimately comes from a place of optimism. It is optimistic to expect and to nurture a reaction of potentially motivating outrage, when you portray the brutality of which human individuals, at the behest of human institutions, are capable. It is optimistic to believe that, faced with extraordinary cruelty, a viewer’s ordinary decency will be compelled to rise and rebel. “Green Border” is a heart-in-mouth thriller set on the Polish-Belarusian border that wraps its social critique in the razor wire of punchy, intelligent cinematic craft in order to elicit precisely such emotions. If we can feel the horror, perhaps there is hope.
It is 2021 and a Syrian family are fleeing Isis and their ravaged hometown of Harasta on an airplane bound for Belarus.
It is 2021 and a Syrian family are fleeing Isis and their ravaged hometown of Harasta on an airplane bound for Belarus.
- 9/5/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Plot: When a goddess of war reincarnates in the body of a young girl, street orphan Seiya discovers that he is destined to protect her and save the world. But only if he can face his own past and become a Knight of the Zodiac.
Review: Live-action adaptations of anime films and series have succeeded in Japan, but few have overcome the transition to Hollywood. For every Alita Battle Angel, there is a Ghost in the Shell, Dragon Ball Evolution, and Death Note. The cultural barrier aside, there has never been the right balance between ambition and execution. Sony’s Knights of the Zodiac is a valiant attempt to bring the Saint Seiya anime to life with a modest budget and recognizable actors just below the A-list. The result is a visually impressive movie with some franchise potential that ends up being squandered by a bland screenplay that barely scratches...
Review: Live-action adaptations of anime films and series have succeeded in Japan, but few have overcome the transition to Hollywood. For every Alita Battle Angel, there is a Ghost in the Shell, Dragon Ball Evolution, and Death Note. The cultural barrier aside, there has never been the right balance between ambition and execution. Sony’s Knights of the Zodiac is a valiant attempt to bring the Saint Seiya anime to life with a modest budget and recognizable actors just below the A-list. The result is a visually impressive movie with some franchise potential that ends up being squandered by a bland screenplay that barely scratches...
- 5/11/2023
- by Alex Maidy
- JoBlo.com
A good idea for a biopic doesn’t always find its ideal reflection on screen. Look what happened to Leonardo DiCaprio’s J. Edgar (as in Hoover), Hilary Swank’s Amelia (as in Earhart) and Colin Farrell’s Alexander (as in the Great). To that list of stymied ambition, add Mr. Jones, as in Gareth Jones (James Norton), the Welsh journalist whose exposé of Soviet atrocities leading up to World War II pissed off so many higher-ups that he never lived to see the age of 30.
On the surface, director...
On the surface, director...
- 6/19/2020
- by Peter Travers
- Rollingstone.com
There’s a lot going on in the historical drama Mr. Jones, that’s for sure. Unfortunately, too little of what happens is of limited interest, at least in the manner being depicted. What should be a troubling, urgent, and deeply upsetting tale instead comes off fairly rote and uninspiring. The material is there, it just never comes across in a particularly cinematic way. Additionally, the film does an incredibly frustrating thing in detailing some of its most interesting information during a title card at the end. That sealed the deal and prevented me from giving it even a mild recommendation. Now available On Demand, it seems like it’s destined to be quickly forgotten about. The movie is a biographical/historical drama, taking place in the days before the second World War would begin. Ambitious journalist Gareth Jones (James Norton) has traveled from the United Kingdom to Moscow, chasing a story.
- 4/5/2020
- by Joey Magidson
- Hollywoodnews.com
Camerimage, the festival in Toruń, Poland dedicated to the art of cinematography, handed out its prestigious Frog prizes this evening. The big winner was “Joker” cinematographer Lawrence Sher, who won the top prize, the Golden Frog, in addition to the Audience Prize. The Bronze Frog was awarded to “The Painted Bird” Dp Vladimír Smutný, while “The Two Popes” Dp César Charlone won the Silver Frog. A full list of winners at the end of this article.
Now in its 27th year, Camerimage has become homecoming week for cinematographers from around the globe, with a vast number of the best DPs, past and present, in attendance. From an awards perspective — considering cinematographers nominate their colleagues — it’s hard to overestimate the value of DPs presenting their work and discussing their craft with their tight-knit community during the week-long celebration.
Sher — whose “Joker” screened early in the fest, and has been in...
Now in its 27th year, Camerimage has become homecoming week for cinematographers from around the globe, with a vast number of the best DPs, past and present, in attendance. From an awards perspective — considering cinematographers nominate their colleagues — it’s hard to overestimate the value of DPs presenting their work and discussing their craft with their tight-knit community during the week-long celebration.
Sher — whose “Joker” screened early in the fest, and has been in...
- 11/16/2019
- by Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
Camerimage, the Polish film festival dedicated to the art of cinematography, has become homecoming week for directors of photography from around the globe. And while Camerimage organizers say they have no interest in the American awards season, cinematographers nominate cinematographers for the Oscars — and the 13 films that compete for the Golden Frog for Best Cinematography have become a predictor of the Academy’s Best Cinematography nominees.
The Camerimage 2019 Main Competition includes: “Ford v Ferrari” (Dp Phedon Papamichael), “The Irishman” (Dp Rodrigo Prieto), “Joker” (Dp Lawrence Sher), “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” (Dp Adam Newport-Berra), “Motherless Brooklyn” (Dp Dick Pope), “The Two Popes” (Dp César Charlone), “The Painted Bird” (Dp Vladimír Smutný), “An Officer and a Spy” (Dp Paweł Edelman), “Never Look Away” (Dp Caleb Deschanel), “Mr. Jones” (Dp Tomasz Naumiuk), “Shadow” (Dp Xiaoding Zhao), “Bolden” (Dp Neal Norton), and “Amundsen” (Dp Paal Ulvik Rokseth).
IndieWire has confirmed that...
The Camerimage 2019 Main Competition includes: “Ford v Ferrari” (Dp Phedon Papamichael), “The Irishman” (Dp Rodrigo Prieto), “Joker” (Dp Lawrence Sher), “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” (Dp Adam Newport-Berra), “Motherless Brooklyn” (Dp Dick Pope), “The Two Popes” (Dp César Charlone), “The Painted Bird” (Dp Vladimír Smutný), “An Officer and a Spy” (Dp Paweł Edelman), “Never Look Away” (Dp Caleb Deschanel), “Mr. Jones” (Dp Tomasz Naumiuk), “Shadow” (Dp Xiaoding Zhao), “Bolden” (Dp Neal Norton), and “Amundsen” (Dp Paal Ulvik Rokseth).
IndieWire has confirmed that...
- 10/21/2019
- by Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
The story of Gareth Jones is such a fascinating one, built on such intrepid, one-man-against-the-system ideals, that it’s a wonder it hasn’t been filmed into oblivion over the past 80 years. A young Welsh journalist who blew the first public whistle on the Holodomor — the man-made famine of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine — only to be broadly discredited by his professional peers and murdered before his 30th birthday, he was the quintessential man who knew too much. “Mr. Jones,” Agnieszka Holland’s suitably absorbing but somewhat stuffy biopic, knows too much in a different sense: neophyte screenwriter Andrea Chalupa’s plainly well-researched script is at such pains to put all its fact-finding on the screen that what should be an urgent political thriller proceeds at a bit of a trudge, its human dimensions not always clear in the ultra-low lighting.
A far stricter edit of this baggy 140-minute film would...
A far stricter edit of this baggy 140-minute film would...
- 2/10/2019
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Cold War, Roma also win awards.
The Fortress cinematographer Ji-yong Kim won the Golden Frog in main competition at Camerimage, the international film festival for the art of cinematography.
Scroll down for full list of winners
The 26th edition was held in Bydgoszcz, Poland from November 10 - 17.
The Fortress, directed by Dong-hyuk Hwang, tells the story of the second Manchu invasion of Korea in 1636. Ji-yong Kim was also awarded the best cinematographer award at this year’s Asian Film Awards.
Polish cinematographer Lukasz Zal won the Silver Frog for Pawel Pawlikowski’s black-and-white drama Cold War, Poland’s official foreign language Oscar entry.
The Fortress cinematographer Ji-yong Kim won the Golden Frog in main competition at Camerimage, the international film festival for the art of cinematography.
Scroll down for full list of winners
The 26th edition was held in Bydgoszcz, Poland from November 10 - 17.
The Fortress, directed by Dong-hyuk Hwang, tells the story of the second Manchu invasion of Korea in 1636. Ji-yong Kim was also awarded the best cinematographer award at this year’s Asian Film Awards.
Polish cinematographer Lukasz Zal won the Silver Frog for Pawel Pawlikowski’s black-and-white drama Cold War, Poland’s official foreign language Oscar entry.
- 11/18/2018
- by Tiffany Pritchard
- ScreenDaily
South Korean cinematographer Kim Ji-yong won the EnergaCamerimage fest top prize, the Golden Frog, on Saturday for the sweeping imagery of his Renaissance-era war story “The Fortress” by director Hwang Dong-Hyuk. Juror David Gropman, a production designer, praised the film’s “staggering beauty and epic scale.”
Poland’s own rising-star Dp Lukasz Zal won the Silver Frog for the crisp, monochrome look of period love story “Cold War” by Pawel Pawlikowski while Alfonso Cuaron, who wrote, directed and filmed the richly atmospheric black-and-white film “Roma,” named for the Mexico City neighborhood where he grew up, scored the Bronze Frog.
The prizes, handed out at the Opera Nova music hall in Bydgoszcz, Poland, capped a week of top cinematography work in 10 competitions, an experience fest director Marek Zydowicz described as a great success despite “crisis situations” during the week, which included the brief arrest of cinematographer Matthew Libatique on suspicion of assault.
Poland’s own rising-star Dp Lukasz Zal won the Silver Frog for the crisp, monochrome look of period love story “Cold War” by Pawel Pawlikowski while Alfonso Cuaron, who wrote, directed and filmed the richly atmospheric black-and-white film “Roma,” named for the Mexico City neighborhood where he grew up, scored the Bronze Frog.
The prizes, handed out at the Opera Nova music hall in Bydgoszcz, Poland, capped a week of top cinematography work in 10 competitions, an experience fest director Marek Zydowicz described as a great success despite “crisis situations” during the week, which included the brief arrest of cinematographer Matthew Libatique on suspicion of assault.
- 11/17/2018
- by Will Tizard
- Variety Film + TV
Camerimage, the weeklong celebration of cinematography in Bydgoszcz, Poland, comes to a close today by handing out its prestigious Frog prizes. The big winner was South Korean drama “The Fortress,” which won the top prize, the Golden Frog, in the Main Competition. The film directed by Dong-Hyuk Hwang and lensed by Ji Yong Kim was a massive hit in its home country in late 2017 and has since been released in 28 countries, including the U.S., reaching 3.8 million viewers worldwide.
The competition jury gave the Silver Frog to cinematographer Łukasz Żal for “Cold War” and the Bronze Frog to director-cinematographer Alfonso Cuarón for “Roma.” With over 900 cinematographers from around the world in attendance, many voting members of the Asc, Camerimage is an important bellwether for the Oscar race for Best Cinematography. The silver and bronze prizes should be a big boost for the two black-and-white films angling for Oscar nominations.
Five years ago,...
The competition jury gave the Silver Frog to cinematographer Łukasz Żal for “Cold War” and the Bronze Frog to director-cinematographer Alfonso Cuarón for “Roma.” With over 900 cinematographers from around the world in attendance, many voting members of the Asc, Camerimage is an important bellwether for the Oscar race for Best Cinematography. The silver and bronze prizes should be a big boost for the two black-and-white films angling for Oscar nominations.
Five years ago,...
- 11/17/2018
- by Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
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